1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure generally relates to the field of deep sea mining. Particularly, but not exclusively, the present disclosure relates to a system and method of off shore mining for retrieval and extraction of heavy mineral concentrate from placer deposits or other suitable materials.
2. Discussion of the Background Art
Advancement in technology and rapidly progressing industrialization in the current modern world has spurred an upsurge in usage of minerals and metals. Increasing world demand for minerals mandates requisite of new sources of high-quality reserves of heavy minerals concentrate (HMC) which contains metals, minerals and precious stones including gold, diamond, magnetite, rutile, ilmenite, zircon and like. HMC is currently being dredged from continental shelves of global sea floor having placer deposits to cater the increasing world demand for minerals. Placer deposit is a natural concentration of heavy minerals caused by the effect of gravity and weathering processes. Thus, the heavy minerals become concentrated in stream, beach, and lag (residual) gravels and constitute workable ore deposits.
The continental shelves being dredged may constitutes only a very small fraction of HMC from the material recovered from the sea-bed. In generally, the material recovered from the sea-bed is transport to an on-shore processing plant for retrieval and extraction of HMC from the material recovered from the sea-bed. This method is considerably very uneconomical due to increase in cost arising from supply and maintenance of mining and transportation equipment. Moreover, in on shore processing plant, large volumes of wastes like sand, gravel and silt are separated after retrieval and extraction of HMC. With the increasing environmental and pollutions control norms, disposal of these wastes is stipulated and screened to minimize disruption of landscapes, this in turn add a significant cost for the operation. Conventionally, various off-shore techniques have been proposed in order to obtain HMC by undertaking primary separation of material recovered from the sea-bed, considering the fact that waste disposal may be easier and therefore cheaper than on land. Although greater care must be exercised to ensure that waste is not deposited on unworked reserves on the sea-bed. Furthermore, these conventional techniques don't provide a system and method which accomplishes the complete retrieval and extraction of heavy mineral concentrate from material recovered from the sea-bed. The conventional off-shore techniques have limitation with respect to production capacities, higher production costs. Also, there is no significant cost difference in comparative cost between on-shore and off-shore techniques except in special circumstances such as distance from a shore base, environmental factors and like.
The present disclosure is directed to mitigate the above stated problems or other similar problems associated with the prior art.